Hidden passage linked to Underground Railroad discovered in New York museum
Small opening cut into floor at Merchant’s House Museum indicates site was likely used as a ‘safe house’, experts sayA landmark house in Manhattan preserved as a museum to New...
By Richard Luscombe · The Guardian World
Small opening cut into floor at Merchant’s House Museum indicates site was likely used as a ‘safe house’, experts say A landmark house in Manhattan preserved as a museum to New York’s 19th-century history has revealed an even more intriguing secret: its previously unknown status as a refuge for people who escaped slavery before and during the civil war. The Merchant’s House Museum’s link to the Underground Railroad , a network of abolitionists who secured the safe passage of enslaved people to freedom, was discovered when archeologists looked beneath the drawers of a built-in dresser in the wall of a hallway leading to bedrooms on the building’s second floor. Continue reading...